Incogni Review 2026: Does Data Removal Actually Work?

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The verdict: Incogni does one narrow job and does it with less friction than anything else in the category — it sends automated deletion requests to data brokers on your behalf, then keeps re-sending them on a recurring cycle so your details don’t quietly reappear. At $95.88 a year for the Standard plan it is priced below most competitors, and the 30-day money-back guarantee means testing it costs nothing. What it is not is a privacy cure — it cannot touch Google results, social media, or breach data already in circulation, and any review implying otherwise is selling you something.

Last verified: October 13, 2026. Pricing and coverage figures below were re-read on Incogni’s and Optery’s own pricing and product pages that day. Prices change; check the live page before subscribing.

On this page

• What Incogni actually does
• How does Incogni work? (step by step)
• Why some users say Incogni is slow
• Pricing, and which plan is worth it
• What we like and what to watch
• Incogni vs DeleteMe
• Incogni vs Optery
• What data removal can’t do
• Who should buy it
• Frequently asked questions

What Incogni actually does

Price from: $95.88/yr — that is $7.99/mo billed annually, or $15.98 month-to-month (last verified October 13, 2026)  ·  Brokers covered: 420+ automated  ·  Custom removals: 3,000+ additional sites (Unlimited plans)  ·  Guarantee: 30 days  ·  Operator: Incogni Inc., Mission Viejo, California

Data brokers are companies whose business is compiling and selling dossiers on you — name, address history, phone numbers, relatives, estimated income, sometimes far more. They assemble this from public records, loyalty schemes, app permissions and purchased datasets, and they sell it to marketers, background-check sites and anyone else who pays. This is legal, and it is why your details show up on people-search sites you never signed up for.

Many brokers are legally obliged to act on a deletion request, under state privacy laws like California’s CCPA and its equivalents elsewhere. The catch is that you have to ask each one individually, prove who you are, and then do it again when they re-acquire your data from another source. Doing this by hand across hundreds of brokers is a genuine part-time job.

Incogni automates exactly that. You provide your details once, and it files and tracks removal requests on your behalf — permanently, as a subscription, rather than as a one-off clean-up. Incogni states it covers 420+ data brokers with automated removals, with a further 3,000+ sites reachable through the custom-removal feature on its Unlimited tiers, and reports more than 245 million removal requests completed. Incogni says Deloitte independently provided limited assurance on its data removal practices, including that request total, as of July 18, 2025.

How does Incogni work? (step by step)

The mechanics are deliberately hands-off, which is the entire value proposition. Here is the sequence as Incogni describes it on its own site:

1. Sign up and give it your details. You supply the information you want removed — your name, email addresses, home addresses and phone numbers. Incogni needs these to match records and to file requests in your name.
2. It scans. Incogni says it scans people-search sites for your personal information and sends removal requests when records are found.
3. It sends the first wave. Automated removal requests go to the covered data brokers that may hold your data — 420+ of them — citing the relevant privacy law.
4. You watch the dashboard. Progress reports show the number of removal requests sent, in progress and completed, and the dashboard shows each broker’s expected removal time.
5. It repeats. Incogni re-scans and sends fresh waves of requests regularly, because brokers re-acquire deleted records from other sources. New brokers are also added to the covered list over time.

On how often it repeats: Incogni’s own FAQ says only that requests go out “periodically.” Its Deloitte assurance announcement is more specific, stating requests are sent at intervals not exceeding 60 days for public brokers and 90 days for private brokers, unless you are already on a broker’s suppression list. A 10-day interval appears only as an example in a graphic on Incogni’s homepage, not as a stated schedule.

On timing: Incogni’s homepage illustration shows roughly 14 days until resolution as an example, but its FAQ is clear that it depends on the broker: some act within hours, others take weeks. There is no fixed timeline.

That recurring element is the honest argument for paying a subscription rather than spending a weekend doing it yourself. A one-time manual purge decays — within months your data is back, sourced from a broker you missed or a public record refresh. The value here is not the first removal; it is the tenth.

Why some users say Incogni is slow

“Slow removals” is the most common objection to Incogni, and it has three separate causes worth keeping apart.

1. Brokers are given legal response windows, and Incogni cannot shorten them. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act regulations (Cal. Code Regs. tit. 11, § 7021), a business must confirm receipt of a deletion request within 10 business days and respond within 45 calendar days. It may take up to an additional 45 calendar days if it notifies the consumer and explains why, so up to 90 days in total. Under GDPR Article 12(3), a controller must act without undue delay and in any event within one month of receipt, extendable by two further months where necessary, with the extension notified within the first month. A broker that uses the whole window is complying with the law while still looking slow to you.

2. The repeat cycle is months, not days. As covered above, Incogni’s stated recurring interval is up to 60 or 90 days depending on the broker type. A record that reappears does not get a new request the next morning.

3. “Completed” does not always mean “your data was found and deleted.” Security.org, which reviewed Incogni, notes that if a broker replies at all, “even if the response just states they don’t have a file on you, Incogni counts those as completed.” Security.org adds that “completed” doesn’t necessarily mean the data was found in the broker’s database and removed. Security.org also reported that in its own two-week test Incogni removed 100+ profiles, with completed requests rising from 66 at one week to 101 at two weeks, which it called “a slight slowdown after the initial push.” (These are Security.org’s findings, not ours.) The same review says custom removals mostly resolve within seven to 30 days, with some sites taking up to 60.

The fair reading: the delays are mostly baked into how the law and the brokers work, but the dashboard’s “completed” count is a measure of broker replies, not independent proof that a listing is gone. If you want proof you can see, that is the argument for the Optery comparison below. For a manual check, search your own name and city a few weeks after sign-up.

Pricing, and which plan is worth it

Last verified: October 13, 2026, on incogni.com. The month-to-month price is shown for Standard only ($15.98); for the other plans we list the per-month equivalent of the annual price, because that is what Incogni’s pricing page states.

Annual billing is the only sensible way to buy this, and not because of the discount alone. The service works by repetition; a single month buys you the least effective part of it. At $95.88 a year the Standard plan works out to about $8 a month — roughly a streaming subscription — for something that runs unattended.

Which tier? Standard is enough for most people (it does not include custom removals). The Unlimited tiers exist for a specific situation: if searching your own name turns up results on obscure sites outside the automated 420, custom removals let you point Incogni at them individually. If a quick search of your name and city returns nothing alarming beyond the usual big people-search sites, Standard covers it. The Family plan is the clear value play at about $3.20 per person per month ($191.88 a year across five people) — if you are buying this at all and live with other adults, the per-seat maths is hard to argue with.

What we like and what to watch

What we like

• It is genuinely hands-off. You enter your details once. There is no queue of forms to work through, no follow-up emails to answer.
• Recurring requests. Incogni states it re-sends requests at least every 60 to 90 days, depending on broker type. This is the feature that separates a subscription from a weekend of manual opt-outs, and it is the reason the service keeps working.
• Transparent progress. The dashboard shows per-broker status, so you can see what has been sent, what has completed, and what is being resisted.
• Priced at the low end of the category. At $95.88/year Standard is cheaper than Optery’s Extended and Ultimate tiers, and the family per-seat price is lower still.
• A real 30-day money-back guarantee, which makes evaluating it genuinely risk-free.

Watch out for

• You must hand over the data you want removed. To file requests on your behalf, Incogni needs your name, addresses, phone numbers and email. That is unavoidable for any service of this type, but it is worth stating plainly: you are giving personal information to a company in order to have personal information deleted elsewhere.
• “Completed” is the broker’s reply. Security.org notes Incogni counts a broker reply of “we have no file on you” as completed, so the dashboard does not by itself prove a listing was removed.
• Results depend on brokers complying. No service can force a broker to act; they file requests and chase them. Removal timelines are genuinely variable and largely outside Incogni’s control.
• Coverage is not everything. 420+ automated brokers is a large number, not a complete one. Sites outside that list need the Unlimited tier’s custom removals.
• It is a subscription, by design. Cancel and the re-requests stop, at which point your data gradually reappears. That is an accurate description of the problem, not a criticism of the product — but budget for it as ongoing, not one-off.
• No free plan. The 30-day money-back guarantee is the trial (Optery, by contrast, has a free plan; see below).

Incogni vs DeleteMe

DeleteMe is the best-known alternative and the usual comparison. The two differ in approach more than in goal.

DeleteMe leans on human review — it describes a process where staff and proprietary tooling find and remove your information, with a findings report for customers. That report is the thing DeleteMe customers consistently value: it is a readable document showing what was found and where.

Incogni is more automated and generally cheaper. It states coverage of 420+ automated brokers plus 3,000+ custom-removal sites on the Unlimited plans, and you follow progress in a dashboard rather than a report.

We could not re-confirm DeleteMe’s current prices or study figures today (its pricing page did not display amounts when we checked), so we have left numbers out here; check joindeleteme.com for current plans. Our comparison of the best data removal services sets both against the services that were independently tested.

The practical split: choose DeleteMe if you want the human-reviewed report and are willing to pay for that reassurance. Choose Incogni if you want broad automated coverage at a low running cost and are happy to read a dashboard instead of a report.

Incogni vs Optery

Optery is the closest alternative if your main worry from the section above is proof. It has a free plan, and its higher paid plans lean on screenshots as evidence. Figures below are from Optery’s pricing and home pages, read October 13, 2026.

Last verified: October 13, 2026. Broker counts are each company’s own and are not counted the same way, so do not compare them one-for-one. Optery’s Core plan is limited to one name and one city and state for removals.

The practical split: Incogni is cheaper than Optery’s upper tiers and lower effort if you accept the dashboard as your evidence. Optery’s free plan lets you see what is exposed before you pay, and its Extended and Ultimate plans add screenshot reports. If you want removals you can verify, start with Optery’s free scan. We may earn a commission if you sign up through our Optery link; it doesn’t change the price.

What data removal can’t do

This section matters more than the pricing table, and most reviews of this category skip it.

A data-broker removal service removes your details from data brokers. It does not:

• Remove you from Google. Search results reflect pages that exist. Removing a broker’s record can eventually clear the listing, but Incogni does not edit search results.
• Touch social media, forums or anything you posted yourself. That is yours to delete.
• Undo a data breach. Once credentials or records are in circulation, no removal request recalls them.
• Delete public records. Property deeds, court filings, voter rolls and business registrations are public by law. Brokers republish them; the source remains.
• Stop future collection. It removes what exists and repeats the request. It does not prevent a broker acquiring your data again — which is precisely why the subscription repeats.

If your goal is broader privacy rather than specifically getting off people-search sites, removal is one layer among several. Encrypting your traffic is a different problem solved by a different tool — see our VPN comparison — and account security is another again, covered in our password manager guide and hardware security key roundup.

Who should buy it

Worth it if: searching your own name returns people-search listings with your address or phone number; you have a specific reason to reduce your public footprint — a job that attracts attention, an ex-partner, a stalking or harassment concern, or work in law enforcement, healthcare or the judiciary; you get a heavy volume of spam calls and targeted mail; or you simply object on principle and would rather pay about $8 a month than spend weekends filing opt-outs.

Want removals you can verify? See Optery’s free scan first; it shows what is exposed before you pay anything.

Skip it if: you have already done the manual opt-outs recently and are willing to keep repeating them; your name is common enough that broker records rarely resolve to you specifically; or you are hoping it will clean up search results or social media, because it will not.

The clearest case is the family plan. At roughly $3.20 per person per month for five people, the per-seat cost falls below the point where the calculation needs much thought.

Frequently asked questions

Does Incogni actually work?

For what it claims to do, yes — it files and repeats deletion requests with data brokers, and the dashboard shows which have completed. Incogni reports more than 245 million removal requests completed and says Deloitte provided limited assurance on its practices. Security.org points out that a broker reply saying it has no record still counts as completed. What it cannot do is force a broker to comply or guarantee a timeline; some act in hours, others take weeks of repeated requests.

How long before I see results?

Incogni’s homepage illustration shows about 14 days to resolution as an example, but its FAQ says it depends on the broker (hours for some, weeks for others), and follow-up requests recur at intervals of up to 60 to 90 days. Expect partial results early and a fuller picture over a few months, because the slower brokers need repeated requests.

Is it safe to give Incogni my personal information?

It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that it is an unavoidable trade-off in this category: a service cannot file removal requests on your behalf without knowing what to remove. Incogni operates as Incogni Inc. out of Mission Viejo, California, so it is subject to US privacy law. Read its privacy policy before subscribing — that is a reasonable step with any company you hand identity data to.

Can I do this myself for free?

Yes, and if you have the patience it costs nothing but time. Under privacy laws such as California’s CCPA, many brokers must act on a verified deletion request. The difficulty is scale and repetition: hundreds of brokers, each with its own process and verification, and all of it needing to be repeated as records are re-acquired. What you are paying for is the repetition, not the first pass.

What happens if I cancel?

The recurring requests stop. Data already removed does not instantly return, but brokers re-acquire records over time from public records and other sources, so your exposure gradually rebuilds. Within the first 30 days the money-back guarantee applies.

Does it remove me from Google search?

No. Incogni removes records held by data brokers. Where a broker takes down the underlying page, the search listing usually disappears afterwards as Google recrawls — but that is a downstream effect, not something Incogni controls, and it does nothing about results on sites that are not data brokers.

Bottom line

Incogni is a narrow tool that does its narrow job well and charges reasonably for it. The recurring request cycle is the feature worth paying for, the 420+ broker coverage is broad without being complete, and $95.88 a year sits in the middle of the category — Optery Core ($39 a year) and EasyOptOuts ($19.99 a year, 200+ brokers by its own count) cost less, with narrower coverage.

Buy it understanding what it is: a subscription that suppresses your data-broker footprint for as long as you keep paying. It will not make you anonymous, and the review sites implying otherwise are overselling. Within its actual scope, it is the one we would start with — and the 30-day guarantee means finding out costs nothing. If proof of removal matters more to you than price, Optery’s free scan is the place to start.

Last verified: October 13, 2026, against Incogni’s and Optery’s own pricing and product pages. Prices and plan structures change — confirm on the provider’s site before subscribing.